One of the simple joys of childhood
Just getting re-acclimatised (ok so I just made that word up!) after my recent trip to Nuwara Eliya, I thought I’d recount a special something about my childhood which I re-discovered enroute my trip to the hills!
Being an Ex-Planters daughter, my trips to and from Colombo were quite frequent. Living in Hewahata (off Kandy) for the first six years of my life, driving down to Colombo via Kadugannawa, which back then inevitably meant driving through the ‘Balana’ tunnel. Although the shortest tunnel in the country (and possibly the world) when I was a kid, it seemed huge and foreboding, yet at the same time quite exciting to drive through!
My father used to find it quite amusing to ask us (my two sisters and I, that is) if which road we’d rather him take - the upper road minus the tunnel or the lower one with the tunnel. The response was always of course unanimous and the same each time. “Let’s go through the tunnel!” we’d shout in chorus and off we’d go. The suspense and anticipation was killing as my father turned on to the lower road. Finally…we enter the tunnel and get our father to toot the horn as loud as possible, whilst we shriek in delight! Although the experience itself was short lived, the thrill of it lasted all the way back home.
Much to my disappointment though, I just read up on why such a short tunnel was built in the first place, and boy did the findings put a dampner on my high spirits. The tunnel was apparently built by the British as a psychological weapon against the Kandyan philosophy, which claimed that the Kandyan kingdom would never fall until the day the mountains were tunnelled. Sigh…talk about taking the wind off my sails…
Oh well…atleast I was able to enjoy this fond and somewhat naive memory of my childhood - untainted and in its purest form, for the past 17 years right?
Awww …. cute story Tinks
My sister & I used to do the same too …. the tunnel was far more fun than the normal road !
Comment by Iroms — May 10, 2005 @ 9:03 am
things are so incredibly simple when you’re young…it’s only when we grow older do we learn dirty words like disillusionment and compromise. i’m just glad to be eligible for the complicated joys of adulthood.
Comment by Smriti — May 10, 2005 @ 11:11 am
Hey babes! That was nostalgic! I too remember the excitement when my father would drive through the tunnel at Kadugannawa. It was such a thrill for my two brothers and I. I think it was the only tunnel I knew and like you said, it was the shortest as well so the excitement was always short lived but the memory would last a while, in fact I can still go back to it!
Comment by Flicker — May 10, 2005 @ 4:29 pm
Hey… That was great, I think the mountain air certainly did you good..! As you know many of our childhood memories are shared and even this one seems like a day from when I used to pack up and leave for the hills during the holydays. I can really identify with your story because I hated traveling when I was a child and was always car-sick, throwing up all the way. But the churning in my tummy was always forgotton when we approached Kadugannawa. Thanks.!
Comment by Suren — May 17, 2005 @ 11:57 am